On democratising reading culture: Philippine Book Festival marks its third year

This year’s venue is strategically located in a mall in the heart of Metro Manila, making it easily accessible. Visitors can reach it via the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 3 and the EDSA Busway, which provide convenient transport for those coming from surrounding areas like Caloocan City, Quezon City, Makati City, and Taguig City, as well as from those on the eastern side, such as Cainta, Taytay, Antipolo, Pasig, and, of course, Mandaluyong.

“The decision to move the PBF to a different and smaller venue is definitely a bold one. We hope to offset that with the venue’s accessibility, generate higher foot traffic, and provide convenience for more visitors from other areas,” explains NBDB executive director Charisse Aquino-Tugade.

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary this coming June, NBDB proudly shares that it has made great strides in boosting readership, accessibility of Filipino-authored books, and publication of Filipiniana titles in the past four years. Concerned with the lack of quality Philippine-authored books in libraries and bookstores nationwide, Aquino-Tugade spearheaded the PBF in 2023, a retail and activation space that celebrates Philippine books while bringing in revenue for publishing professionals.

“We created a marketplace for Philippine books because it’s difficult for Filipinos to easily access them. We sat down with the Department of Education (DepEd) to address this problem, and now we have the PBF, which is this marketplace for Philippine books, but also a site for the DepEd to purchase quality education materials for schools across the country,” explains Aquino-Tugade.

Here are the events on the main stage of the Philippine Book Festival 2025:

Today, the annual fair is considered a must-visit “third place” for readers and authors alike. Its consistent striking visuals and interactivity significantly appeal to children and the young-at-heart. This engaging, experience-based setting fuses entertainment, education, and shopping—a favourite pastime among Filipinos—but for a good purpose.

Through the years, the PBF has achieved the groundbreaking milestone of making the DepEd procure over 925 million pesos worth of Philippine trade books and textbooks.

“This is a great first step in addressing the many gaps that are indicative of a much larger systemic problem, a challenge the NBDB set out to tackle three years ago,” she continues.

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Here’s how to register online for the Philippine Book Festival 2025:

Through the PBF, the NBDB, an attached agency of the DepEd, provides space for DepEd’s regional and district offices to purchase quality books and engage with fellow educators and professionals from the book publishing industry. The large-scale institutional purchase by DepEd addresses the issues of access and readership, bringing books to thousands of readers all over the Philippines.

“The PBF is our love letter to Philippine books—its creators and its readers, and the many stories they have told about our people. It’s also our response to our country’s reading crisis, which is largely a problem of access. The PBF creates that marketplace for quality Filipino titles, and serves as a bridge between those books and readers across the country,” Aquino-Tugade says.

As the PBF continues to thrive, the agency pursues its role in not just growing the book industry but also in shaping the environments that make reading possible for all sectors of the population.

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